


I Never Wanted to Say This

by whitenoise17



Series: Orchestra AU [1]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Halsey (Musician), My Chemical Romance, PVRIS (Band), Panic! at the Disco, Paramore, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Orchestra, F/F, M/M, Multi, i might add more pairings or characters later idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-02 00:35:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10204661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitenoise17/pseuds/whitenoise17
Summary: Brendon and Dallon are caught up in the worst argument of their lives. To make things worse, it's festival week in their orchestra: five days trapped in a rehearsal room with each other. What could go wrong?





	1. Monday Pt I

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know where any of this is going or if anyone's going to like it. I don't even know if I'll finish it, to be honest. I was re-reading frankiesin's Marching Band AU and well, this happened. I'm planning to make this sort of a series, inspired by the Marching Band AU and notquitepunkrock's And One Time... series. Who knows, though. Also, I wanted to make this chapter longer but this will do. Let me know who I should put in this or what pairings, if you want! Shout out to my orchestra teacher for being not quite as demanding with rehearsals as Mr. Walter.

Festival week was always rough. This year, however, was particularly bad for Brendon. He was in the midst of the biggest fight he’d ever had with his best friend, Dallon. Brendon wanted nothing more than to go home, play video games, and ignore the fact that Dallon Weekes existed, but festival week required the orchestra members to all but live in the music hallway of their high school. Also, Brendon’s seat in the middle of the viola section positioned him in just the right place to look directly at the first chair cellist. Dallon. 

Brendon was sinking into his misery when Ashley, his stand partner and most trusted friend (after Dallon, but Brendon was ignoring him,) elbowed him in the side. Hard. Brendon may or may not have sworn. That’s a lie, he definitely did swear, and loudly enough that the conductor heard. 

“Mr. Urie, we are trying to rehearse. Save the behavioral issues for your academic classes. If you feel the need to… express yourself, feel free to go out in the hallway.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that Ashley accidently hit me with her bow, and I wasn’t expecting it. I’ll be quiet now.” Mr. Walter seemed to accept this excuse, or else he just didn’t care enough to push it. The rehearsal moved on, with Mr. Walter yelling at the basses to play their sixteenth notes in tempo. This would take a while, because the basses weren’t really capable of playing sixteenth notes at all, let alone in tempo. Brendon turned to Ashley.

“Why’d you hit me?” he whispered.

“You were staring at he-who-shall-not-be-named.” Ashley smiled when she said it. Brendon knew he was being overdramatic as hell, but he didn’t want to be reminded of Dallon any more than he had to. They had been best friends since second grade, and Brendon just wasn’t used to existing as a person without Dallon. At least the rest of the orchestra would thank him. He was quiet this week. “Look, you’ve got to either talk to him or get over it. Looking at him weirdly during rehearsal isn’t going to help anything.”

She was right, but Brendon already knew that. His problem wasn’t that he didn’t know what to do, it was that he didn’t want to do it. 

“Fine. I’ll talk to him on the way home.” Ashley looked pleased, but Brendon was panicking a little. He had forgotten about this new bit of awkardness: Dallon was supposed to drive him home from rehearsal every day. Maybe this would be the motivation Brendon needed to get over himself and talk about it.

He’d have to figure that out later, though, because the basses had finally played something resembling measure 56, and the rehearsal was ready to go on.

\------

Two hours later, festival rehearsals took a break so the players could rest and grab some pizza before the last hour and a half of practice. The orchestra had already rehearsed for over four hours that day, and everyone was about ready to take their instruments down to the lake and sacrifice them to the waves. Unfortunately, that would lead to Mr. Walter murdering the entire group, so they didn’t do that.

Dallon really wanted to, though. He loved being first chair cello, especially since that position usually went to a senior, and Dallon was only a junior. He was good at the cello, and since Dallon was pretty shit at literally everything else, he threw himself into orchestra. It was his escape, but during festival week, it became more like something he needed to escape from. Especially with Brendon there.

If you thought about it (not that Dallon was,) their fight was really fucking stupid. Dallon was ready to move on and get over it, but Brendon wouldn’t even look at him, except when he thought Dallon couldn’t see him. Dallon missed him, missed having someone to laugh at Mr. Walter with and complain about the violins to. 

He missed Brendon outside of orchestra, too. They were always talking, their text conversations stretching across days and never really ending. Dallon missed being able to curl up on the couch, snuggling Brendon and watching old movies. (They were really disgustingly clingy on movie nights.) He missed the totally platonic (Brendon would insert quotation marks there) nights they spent together. He even missed Brendon’s constant flirting with him, which had annoyed him to no end before the fight.

They would see each other tonight, though, and Dallon could talk to him. It would all be okay. Hopefully. But right now, as Mr. Walter called the orchestra back, Dallon needed to play the cello, and that was the one thing he could definitely do.


	2. Monday Pt II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drama time! I'm sorry.

Brendon was exhausted. He’d also left his viola at school, which, of course, he only realized after Dallon had pulled out of the parking lot. He was not about to say anything about the viola to Dallon, or anything at all. Sure, he’d promised Ash he would talk to Dallon, but now he was rethinking that. Maybe just staying silent would help it go away. Besides, it’s not like he was going to practice anyway. All he was going to do tonight was go home, eat dinner, and fall asleep. 

Dallon, apparently, was not on the same page as Brendon. He spoke, his voice nervous and unsure, and Brendon felt something in his chest shift. Dallon was nervous around him. It was a mark of how much everything had changed since their fight. Brendon wanted to ignore it, to give in and go back to the way things used to be, but the stubborn part inside of him wanted to just stay silent and let everything fall apart. Maybe his friendship with Dallon just wasn’t meant to continue past this point.

He needed Ashley here. She would punch him if she knew how stupid (and emo) he was being right now, and then she’d give him some quality advice that he probably wouldn’t take. Brendon supposed he could text her, but he didn’t want to get yelled at over text and besides, it would be rude to text her while Dallon was talking. He looked over at Dallon, and nodded to show he was ready to listen.

\-----

Brendon was looking at him. This was good; this was progress. Dallon could tell the other boy hadn’t been listening, so he started over.

“Look, Bren, I know you’re mad at me, and I don’t even know if you want to be friends again. I just need to know where we stand. I need to know if you hate me; I can handle it if you do but I just… need to know.” 

Dallon stopped talking. He was about to cry. This was bad for two reasons: first of all, Brendon would see it, and secondly, he couldn’t really see the road. He blinked a few times to clear his eyes, and realized they were almost in front of Brendon’s house. There wasn’t much time left.

“Please.” Dallon’s voice broke. Every second that Brendon didn’t answer, just looked at him in silence, felt like a piece of him breaking. He missed Brendon, and he just wanted to know what was going on here. He pulled into Brendon’s driveway, but the other boy didn’t get out of the car.

Instead, he spoke to Dallon. All Brendon said was “okay,” but Dallon felt the tears coming anyway. He turned his face away slightly, so he still looked like he was listening to Brendon but his crying was hidden. “I don’t hate you, okay? I don’t know what we’re gonna do about this, but I could never hate you. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Brendon got out of the car, briefly smiling at Dallon before he grabbed his bag and went inside his house. Dallon, sitting with tears streaming down his face in Brendon’s driveway, noticed that he didn’t have his viola. It wasn’t in the car, either. Dallon really didn’t understand Brendon sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so short. Sorry. Like I said last chapter, this was inspired by two lovely series, frankiesin's Marching Band AU and notquitepunkrock's And One Time... series. Please go read those if you haven't. Also, please please please leave comments. I'm really unsure of this, so let me know what you liked (and what you didn't, I guess) and tell me who else/what pairings I should add to this series. Oh also, the tags are for the series as a whole; I'm not sure everyone will make it into this particular work, but they'll get here eventually!


	3. Tuesday

There was one minute until orchestra started, and the entire room was in chaos. Pete’s foot was stuck in the trash can, and Gerard was attempting to pull him out. Hayley was lying on the floor, half-laughing, half-crying, and Lynn was threatening to step on her stomach if she didn’t get up immediately. Brendon was yelling at Ashley, and Dallon hadn’t appeared at all. Mr. Walter was sitting at the front of the room, slumped over his desk in defeat. He might have been crying, or simply cursing the day he decided to teach high school orchestra. They were equally likely.

“Ashley! Where is our stand? I’m fucking serious! I’m not going to play with my music on my lap again!” Brendon had done that once. Eighth grade. Not a good idea.

“I don’t know! I don’t want to read music off your lap, either!” Ashley paused and took a breath, quite obviously calming herself to deal with Brendon’s shit. “Just take Pete’s; he won’t notice, his foot’s in the trash can.” She had a point. Brendon set his viola carefully on his chair and sneaked past the cello section to the basses, taking Pete’s stand and returning to his chair. At least, that was his plan. Instead, he ran straight into Dallon. Luckily, Dallon was ridiculously tall, or else the stand would have hit him right in the face. As it was, both Brendon and the stand awkwardly collided with Dallon’s chest. 

“Shit!” Brendon yelled. Mr. Walter raised his head, and Brendon ducked behind a chair. The conductor shook his head and went to resolve the trash can incident. Brendon stood up. “I’m so sorry- I wasn’t- I didn’t… see you.” He was blushing. This was not what he wanted to deal with today. He’d been planning on avoiding Dallon after what he’d done last night. Dallon had tried to resolve it, had tried to talk to him, and Brendon had run away. After that, he didn’t see any options but to avoid Dallon and feel embarrassed and regretful about the whole thing for the rest of his life.

Okay, that was a terrible plan, but it was probably better than hitting Dallon with a music stand and then stuttering and making a fool of himself. Brendon took a deep breath. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine,” Dallon answered. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I’m not the one who got hit with the music stand, though.”

“Good point. You want help with it?” Brendon was about to say no, he didn’t have to do that, but Dallon picked up the stand and followed Brendon back to where his viola and Ashley were waiting. This was an outcome that Brendon had not expected.

“Thanks. You didn’t have to help, I mean, I hit you with the thing and all you’re gonna do is carry it back for me?”

“Yep. I’m nice like that,” Dallon said, winking at Brendon before retreating to the cello section. 

“Fuck.” Brendon turned to Ashley, scooping up his viola while she arranged their music on the stand. “What do I do now?”

“What do you mean? That was good, right? You’re talking again. Last night must have gone well,” Ash observed. 

Brendon glanced up to see what Mr. Walter was doing before he responded. Luckily, they had plenty of time to talk, as Hayley was currently receiving a lecture from both Mr. Walter and Lynn on taking her responsibilities as concert mistress seriously. Ashley was watching Lynn, looking a little bit lovestruck. Brendon reminded himself to ask her about that later.

“It was pretty awful, actually. He tried to talk to me and work things out, and I just kind of got out of the car and ran away from him. He thought I hated him for some reason, and I guess I just wasn’t ready for him to be so nice. I could’ve dealt with him being mad at me, ‘cause I was expecting it and all, but he was almost crying. I should have talked to him; I’m so goddamn stupid…” Brendon continued berating himself for the events of last night, but Ashley cut him off before he talked himself into an anxiety attack.

“That does sound bad, but he’s obviously not *that* upset about it. No offense, but if he was mad, he probably would’ve hit you with that stand instead of carrying it for you.” She had a point. Brendon sighed and made up his mind to actually talk to Dallon before festival was over. He wasn’t going to get a much better chance to see him than being stuck in close proximity to him all day, every day for a week. Everything was going to be fine.

\-----

Everything was not going to be fine. Dallon was more stressed out than he’d ever been. Not only was the whole Brendon situation going on, but he was worried about orchestra. He worried about festival every year, and it always turned out fine, but that didn’t really help him when he was messing up bowings and leading the entire cello section to failure. He had to use this break to calm down and get his head in the game (no High School Musical reference intended) before Mr. Walter called him out for being distracted. 

Unfortunately, even if he did manage to get through festival without any public humiliation from the conductor, he would still have to deal with his personal life. Even though it was probably the last thing he wanted to spend break thinking about, he was coming to some unfortunate realizations: one, his friendship with Brendon might not actually recover from this, and two, he pretty much had no other friends, at all. 

He was being stupid, honestly. Something about these long rehearsals made him think a lot, and thinking a lot is almost guaranteed to lead to feeling hopeless, at least for Dallon. Maybe everything would be okay after all. He talked to Brendon today. Admittedly, it took him being hit with a stand for them to have a conversation, but it’s better than nothing. Even if his chest really hurt. 

Dallon returned to the orchestra room early. There was no point to wandering around the hallways alone, and besides, the parents watching the elementary school soccer practice in the gym started to look quite suspicious after he walked past three times. There was some drama going on in the violin section. Pete was over there, for some reason. He was probably causing the drama. The guy gets his foot stuck in a trash can for twenty minutes, and he’s still looking for attention. Dallon shook his head, smiling slightly, and picked up his cello.

As soon as his bow hit the string, Dallon forgot all about what was going on in the rest of the orchestra. This was the reason he put up with all the rehearsals, his fellow members’ antics, and the endless hours of practice. This was why he’d chosen the cello in the first place. The strings rang as he played, vibrating under his fingers in the way that told him he was doing this right. The piece was amazing, if he did say so himself. He even nailed ninth position, which was the bane of his existence. If he could only play like that during the actual rehearsal, he’d be more than ready for festival. The stress he could feel from Mr. Walter and the rest of the orchestra was getting to him, but he had to focus on cello. That’s all he needed, to temporarily forget about festival, about Brendon, about everything else in his life. If he finished this one rehearsal perfectly, he’d be okay.

Hopefully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so maybe I should've figured this out before I started posting this, but I'm still undecided as to what the fight was actually about. That will be explained in the next chapter, I hope. This one's a little bit longer than the last one, and I tried to do a little more with the side characters. Enjoy this chapter, and please (please) comment on it!


	4. Wednesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Featuring Gerard Way and the beginnings of Gunngipane!

Dallon was leaning back in his chair, scrolling through Twitter and feeling like a zombie, when Gerard Way sat down in the second chair. Dallon knew Gerard pretty well, but they didn’t usually talk during rehearsals or anything. Gerard was a texting type of person, which was fine with Dallon, because he was, too. And yet, here they were.

“Hey, Gerard. What’s up?”

“Not much. Walter has it out for me again, so I figured I’d avoid him during break.” Gerard sighed. He had other things that he liked more than violin, like drawing, and writing. Because of that, he didn’t practice very much, and he was pretty low in the order of chairs in the second violin section. Gerard would have liked to be better at violin, but most days he was fine the way he was. During festival week, however, Mr. Walter was always calling Gerard out, telling him to practice more and generally making him feel like quitting orchestra. Mr. Walter was a great conductor, and for most of the year Gerard loved him. But festival week was hard.

“That sucks. You’re always welcome to sit here, at least until second chair gets back.” Dallon could understand how festival week was hard for Gerard. There wasn’t that much he could do to help, but he would help if he could, including letting Gerard hide in the cello section (even if Mr. Walter would chew him out for harboring a fugitive.)

“Thanks, Dallon. So what’s going on with you? No offense, but you don’t look too good.”

“None taken. There’s just lots of stress right now, with festival and everything with Brendon…” 

“What happened with Brendon?” Gerard was clearly confused. “Sorry, I’m a little out of the loop with all the orchestra drama, since I missed Monday and I spent most of yesterday trying to pull Pete out of a trash can.”

“I would ask you what even happened with that, but I’m not sure I want to know.” Gerard shook his head to indicate that he probably didn’t. “So basically, Brendon and I had this fight two weeks ago. We haven’t talked much since, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. I mean, we might just get over it, right? But then again, it might never be the same. I don’t know.” Dallon rubbed his face. He was tired of this. He just wanted Brendon back, but he didn’t know what to do.

Gerard rested his hand on Dallon’s shoulder in a vaguely comforting way. “Not to sound nosy, which I am, but what was the fight about? Maybe that will help you figure out what to do.”

“Okay, don’t laugh at this or judge me, but we were at this party and I might have drank a little too much. And then I ended up asking Brendon out, which I’ve wanted to do for a while, and he didn’t know what to do so he just left me there and went home with some girl. He came to my house the next day to apologize, but we ended up having a screaming match about it. We haven’t really talked much since then. I don’t know if he’s still angry, I mean, he hit me with his stand yesterday, but I think that was accidental.” 

“Shit. That’s hard. I don’t know what to tell you, I’m not really good with feelings and shit.” 

“Me neither.” Dallon and Gerard fell into silence.

\-----

“Do you like Lynn?” Brendon whispered to Ashley while the cellos practiced.

“What the fuck? Of course not. I mean, not that I don’t like Lynn, I mean, she’s amazing, but I don’t like her like that.”

“Okay, you have such a huge crush on her,” Brendon said, his voice getting slightly louder as he spoke. Call him cliche, but love got him excited. Besides, the rest of the orchestra had been betting on when Ash and Lynn would get together since their freshman year, and Brendon had twenty dollars to make.

“I do not! Shut the fuck up.” Ashley sounded embarrassed. There was definitely a crush situation here. Brendon wasn’t going to let go of this anytime soon.

“Look, you should just talk to her. We all know you’re in love with each other, so just do it.” Brendon barely resisted adding “don’t let your dreams be dreams,” but he figured it might not be the right moment.

“Brendon, no. I can’t.” Ash looked genuinely worried that Brendon would make her talk to Lynn.

“Okay, okay. Never mind. I think you’d be good together, though.”

“Thanks.” Ash smiled at him, and Brendon felt happier than he had in the past two weeks. Maybe he couldn’t fix his own life, but he could help Ashley with hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone enjoys the update! I'm supposed to be peer-reviewing my essay right now, oops. I might start a Gunngipane fic in this series soon, but I'm trying to finish this one first, so we'll see.


	5. Thursday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are wrapping up (and festival is approaching!)

One day until festival, and the orchestra was falling apart. Hayley got up and walked out at one point, and Lynn had to go retrieve her from the cafeteria. Pete was being Pete, which currently meant he was throwing crumpled pieces of paper at Brendon from across the room. Brendon had crawled under his chair to avoid the projectiles, and Ashley kept kicking his shins in an attempt to get him to come out. Gerard was having a heated discussion about the scientific accuracy of Star Wars with a cellist, and Patrick was trying to mediate their argument, rather unsuccessfully. Mr. Walter was standing on the podium, desperately trying to restore order to the orchestra.

Dallon was watching it all from the cello section. He really didn’t want to get involved with the chaos that was currently unfolding, but at this point he was pretty much the calmest person in the room. He sighed and stood up, walking over to the Star Wars debate. 

“Nick, get back in your seat, or I’ll tell Walter that you weren’t sick last Friday, you just wanted to watch The X-Files.” Nick reluctantly left. “And Gerard, now is not the time for your sci-fi addiction.” Dallon moved on to Pete, figuring Lynn could get Hayley under control. 

“Pete, stop.” Pete threw a piece of paper at Dallon’s head. “Is that your sheet music?” Dallon asked incredulously, unfolding the paper. Pete nodded, looking proud of himself. Dallon hit him on the head with the music and left.

Ashley motioned for Dallon to come over to the viola section. 

“Fix him,” she said, pointing to Brendon. Dallon crouched down next to Brendon.

“Get up.” Brendon shook his head, and Dallon noticed that he was shaking a little. For once, he wasn’t just being difficult. “Come on,” Dallon said in a softer voice. “Let’s go out in the hall where there’s fewer people, okay?” Brendon nodded and crawled out from under the chair. Dallon let Ashley know where they were going before gently leading Brendon out to the hall.

Brendon sat down on a bench in the hallway, and Dallon paused for a moment before seating himself on the other end. However, Brendon slumped over onto Dallon’s lap and lay on him as he sniffed and rubbed his face, trying to get himself under control. They sat there for about ten minutes, until Brendon stood up and told Dallon he was ready to return to the orchestra room. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m fine, really, there was just a lot of stuff going on in there. I couldn’t handle it.” Brendon wouldn’t meet Dallon’s eyes.

“It’s okay. Seriously. Just because we’re… in a weird place right now doesn’t mean I’m gonna judge you for your anxiety. I promise.” Brendon leaned into Dallon’s arms as the taller boy gave him a hug. They held on for a long time, neither of them wanting to lose the little bit of contact they had. This felt like home, for both of them. 

\-----

Eventually, though, they had to go back to rehearsal. Mr. Walter had the rest of the orchestra under control by that point, so they tried their best to sneak back to their respective seats. Luckily for them, Ash had their backs and had told Mr. Walter that Brendon had left his music at home and Dallon drove him back to get it. He was slightly pissed, but once the whole orchestra started playing, the conductor forgot all about them and focused on getting the group to play in tune (which was, quite frankly, an impossible task.)

After rehearsal finished and Mr. Walter gave his customary “festival is tomorrow and you all need to get your shit together” lecture, Brendon climbed into Dallon’s car, gently setting his viola on the backseat. No matter how much Brendon hated rehearsing, he still loved his instrument. He’d had it for three years now, ever since he grew taller (still not very tall, though) in eighth grade. It was one of the only things he would ever be so careful with.

Dallon smiled at Brendon’s cautious manner as he put the instrument away. Meanwhile, Dallon put his cello in the trunk and walked around the car to the driver’s side. Brendon climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door.

“Thanks for being so nice earlier. You didn’t have to.”

“Of course I did. It’s you.” Dallon looked down at his hands gripping the steering wheel, and for the first time in nearly three weeks, he felt like he had a friend again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, to be honest. Let me know in the comments maybe? I started a group chat AU (I know, I hate myself too) in this universe so check that out perhaps? Also, I have my festival tomorrow (fuck) so there might not be an update for a little while, sorry.


	6. Friday Pt. I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Only one more to go! Ft. Josh (if you read the gc fic you already knew that, though)

Rehearsal was in full swing when Josh Dun walked into the room, looking half excited and half terrified. Mr. Walter completely ignored his presence, leaving Josh to stand uncomfortably in the doorway until the end of the song. Once the conductor cut the orchestra off, Josh walked up to the podium. Brendon, along with the rest of the orchestra, subtly (or not-so-subtly) listened to their conversation.

“Excuse me, sir, I was just wondering where you wanted me to sit?” Josh asked.

“That depends. Why are you here?”

“Mrs. Forrest sent me. I’m supposed to replace Andrew?” When Mr. Walter didn’t reply, Josh continued: “The old percussionist?”

“Oh! Yes. Why she sent you over here on the day of festival, I don’t know. It’s far too late for you to learn the music, of course, but if you’d like to sit in and get a feel for our rehearsals, that’s fine with me.”

Josh nodded and walked to the back of the orchestra, taking a seat near the basses. Pete made some sort of hand motion at him, but neither Josh nor Brendon understood what he wanted, so rehearsals continued.

\------

At break, Josh, Gerard, Pete, and Dallon convened on the viola section, evicting a few freshmen to sit next to Brendon and Ashley. Gerard and Pete instantly got into an argument about Game of Thrones vs. Star Wars (Star Wars was the obvious winner, but Pete wouldn’t admit that.) Meanwhile, Josh and Brendon started discussing… something. No one really wanted to know. Ash pulled Dallon aside, clearly seeing that he was feeling left out. 

“Can we talk? I know that we don’t really do that much, but I wanted to talk to you about Brendon.”

“What about Brendon?” Dallon asked carefully.

“He misses you. He’s been all weird and quiet ever since you guys fought, and I just want him to be happy. It seems like you two are getting better, but I just wanted to tell you that you should talk to him. I’m not forcing you, though. If you want to let him go, that’s your choice.” Dallon briefly paused before answering to hand Pete his bow (apparently he wanted to sword fight Gerard, which was a really fucking dumb idea, but if Dallon didn’t enable Pete, someone else would.)

“I would never let him go. We’ll talk, I promise. I’ll try my best to fix things, and I hope he will too.” Ashley, apparently satisfied with that answer, reached over and wrapped her arms around Dallon. It was unlike her, but Dallon supposed she was just relieved he was willing to try. “Oh, and Ash? Thank you. For being there for him when I wasn’t.” Ash smiled and nodded into his shoulder before letting go. She rejoined the larger group, joining Brendon and Josh’s conversation while Dallon remained behind. He sat in silence for a few moments, thinking about what Ashley said. He had to talk to Brendon, and he had to do it tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been really uninspired lately and I just... don't want to write. This chapter's shorter because of that, sorry. Please (please I'm desperate) comment on it, though. Also, my orchestra got all ones at festival!! Go us


	7. Friday Pt. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The finale! The moment we've all been waiting for! Sorry it's so short, and so... bad.

Brendon was sitting cross-legged on the floor, sheet music propped against his back so Ashley could read it behind him. Pete sat across from him, and the two were deep in conversation. Dallon couldn’t help but watch them, even though he was supposed to be practicing. He missed his friends, especially Brendon. This was useless. Dallon set his cello down and walked over. 

“Ash, I hate to steal your music stand, but can I talk to Brendon for a moment?” Ashley nodded and moved so she was sitting behind Pete, who didn’t look happy with his new occupation. Dallon grabbed Brendon’s arm and led him over to a small alcove behind the curtain.

“What do you need?” Brendon was, understandably, confused.

“I want to talk to you. About the fight. Look, I don’t care about what you did. I know that I pressured you and you were scared, and I shouldn’t have said anything. I… I never wanted to tell you. I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry.” Dallon took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to cry, not when the concert started in a few minutes and he shouldn’t even be here.

“Hey, no, it was my fault. I should have reacted better. I was just scared, and I thought if I ignored it and went on like it was a usual night, it would be like nothing changed. I guess I’m just worried that if things change between us, I’ll, I don’t know, lose you or something. Turns out that happened anyway.” Brendon wouldn’t meet Dallon’s eyes. He was looking at the floor, two pairs of dress shoes on the hardwood of the stage. 

Dallon reached out and took Brendon’s hand. It was impulsive, and he probably shouldn’t have done it, but Brendon didn’t push him away. He accepted Dallon’s hand in his own, and his other hand went to the back of Dallon’s neck as their lips met. This was unexpected, but nice, Dallon thought, and then he wasn’t thinking at all. He was just kissing Brendon, and Brendon was kissing him, and Mr. Walter was back here somewhere but neither of them cared. 

Eventually, they broke apart, and it was only then that Dallon heard Pete and Josh cheering and Ashley lecturing them on the appropriate time and place for such shenanigans (her words.) Ash handed Brendon his viola and Pete handed Dallon his cello, and then they straightened out their tuxedoes and walked out onstage.

Their pieces went by in a blur, and when the judges announced that they’d received all ones, Dallon had never been happier. He was friends with Brendon again, more than friends, even, and his hard work had paid off. Today was good, and it got even better as he saw his friends walking towards him. Brendon was at the front of the pack. Once he reached Dallon they were kissing again. Maybe everything was alright, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey hey there's probably more in this universe coming up (hopefully better than this lmao) and also check out my latest fic (or by the last light) cause it's so much better than this... Comment maybe? Idk


End file.
